Table 4.

A checklist for evaluating clinical outcome methods in CM-I treatment studies

Key elements of a CM-I clinical outcome metric	Yes	No
Do measures of symptomatic outcome incorporate direct patient reporting?	( )	( )
Does the outcome metric include a specific assessment of patient quality of life?	( )	( )
Does the outcome metric assess for new symptoms that developed after initial surgery?	( )	( )
Does the outcome metric provide a sufficient multidimensional assessment of outcome for distinct signs & symptoms present preoperatively in individual patients?	( )	( )
Does the outcome metric assess in sufficient detail the location & character of headache symptoms?	( )	( )
Does the study report the rate of revision surgery for persistent disease?	( )	( )
Is the outcome metric valid in CM-I patients?*	( )	( )
Is the outcome metric reliable in CM-I patients?	( )	( )

^*For a more detailed description of different types of validity, such as criterion, construct, and content validity, see resources provided by the COSMIN initiative.⁵⁷